Part 13 (1/2)

'G.o.d, I remember when Stanley, the horse, tried to mount the stuffed pony that your parents sent your son . . .'

'We were all there - the Hanukah party.'

'It plagued my son - the sight of Stanley trying to ”hop” the pony. He said hop - instead of hump - it was soo sweet.'

'There are people who are into that - stuffed animals. ”Plus.h.i.+es” they call them.'

'I have no idea what you're talking about.'

's.e.x parties!'

'And they invite stuffed animals?'

'Speaking of animal behaviour - are we preparing for takeoff yet?'

'I'm sorry, Mrs Stubenstock,' the pilot says. 'There's military aircraft in the area - and the airs.p.a.ce has been closed down.'

'Oh now, is the President coming to town again? Thank G.o.d we're leaving - he always blocks traffic.'

'We're third in line for takeoff as soon as the air opens.'

'We usually fly on Larry's plane, he redecorates it for every flight. Different art work depending on where we're going. Something for LA, something for Basel, something for Venice.'

'That's because he's trying to sell you something.'

'No, I don't think so. We always ask, and he tells us that whatever it is we want - it's not for sale.'

'That's how he does it - that's how he gets you.'

'Did you hear about Sarah and Steve's Warhol worries?'

'No, what?'

'Turns out their Warhols aren't Warhols - they're knockoffs like cheap Louis Vuittons on Ca.n.a.l Street.'

'But they have Polaroids of Andy signing the pictures. Andy and Steve standing together while Andy signed them.'

'Apparently he would sign anything, but that didn't mean that he made it.'

'They were banking on those pictures - literally.'

'Well, you know what they say - you should never be dependent on your art collection to do anything for you that you can't do for yourself.'

'Are you invited to the VIP party?'

'The VIP parties aren't the good parties - there are no invites for the real parties, you just have to know where they are.'

'I told Susie that I would go to the dinner but only as long as I didn't have to sit next to an artist - I never know what to say to them.'

'I always ask them if they're starving - and they never get it,' Cindy says. 'I've noticed that most of the younger artists are carnivores. Remember when artists only ate things like sprouts and bags of ”greens” that they carried with them? Now they all eat meat - it's all post-Damien.'

'Like how?'

'Don't you remember - Damien Hirst's first big piece was really very small . . . It was a piece of steak that his father had choken on. Young Damien gave his father the Heimlich maneuver and the steak came flying out of his mouth and he could breathe again. Damien saved the piece of steak and put it in a jar of formaldehyde that he got from the school and called it I Saved My Father's Life - Now What Will Become of Us I Saved My Father's Life - Now What Will Become of Us.'

'I never heard that story.'

Cindy Stubenstock shrugs. 'It's famous. I think the piece is in the Saatchi collection in London.'

Theo

Dave Eggers

Long had the poets pointed to the steep green hills around the village, noting in prose and song that with their irrational curves, their ridges rising and falling just so, the low mountains resembled the shapes of sleeping men and women. Most practical people thought the poets were pus.h.i.+ng it a bit too far, poets being poets, but then something new happened one morning, just after most of the humans, about five or so hundred in that village at that time, were finis.h.i.+ng their breakfast and dressing their children.

The land shook. Homes, all of them built with stone and barley, trembled and soon collapsed. Animals stampeded, birds dropped from the sky, and in the midst of the chaos, the first giant emerged. The soft green rolls of the hillside gave way to a pale shoulder, an arm of twisted muscle, a waist, a hip. In minutes the hill had become a man, a colossal man everywhere striped with dirt and gra.s.s, rubbing his eyes. He sat up, his legs akimbo before him, and he began chuck-ling. He wiped the gra.s.s from his bald head and his shoulders, swept the dirt from his stomach, and, while he did so, he laughed softly, nodding to himself as if something long mysterious was finally clear.

His name was Soren.

Soon after, a mile or so away, the ground rattled again. The villagers looked south and saw another hillside rise. It was a range that the poet Eythor had called The Woman, and all the humans who watched the giant emerge from it thought, Too bad Eythor is dead, he would have loved to see this. This hill became a woman, as tall as Soren, and she rose from the earth covered in oil and soot, hair long and wild. Like Soren, she was greatly amused and only somewhat surprised by her awakening. She wiped her eyes clean and picked stones from between her aristocratic toes.

This was Magdelena.

By the time Theo, the last giant, arose from the hill closest to the human settlements, his arrival caused little notice. He was shorter than the other two giants, with a ruddy complexion and wide-set eyes. While Soren and Magdelena were tall, of n.o.ble and sinewy form, Theo had long arms but short legs, a flat face and narrow shoulders. But no one noticed the differences between them, at least not on that day. Already four people were dead, crushed under falling debris. There were tears, prayers, wails of men and women. Already the landscape had been broken, recast. Already the sky was brown with dust, and it was into this day, full of misery and regret and rebirth, that Theo awakened.

In those first days, Theo could only sit, dazed from thousands of years of sleep, and watch Magdelena. Yes, Magdelena. At first she was nothing much to see. Her hair gray with ash, her body covered in mica and sandstone, she barely looked female. But then, after some hours sitting, blinking and grinning, she rose and walked to the ocean, dove from the chalky cliffs into the surf below, and emerged a woman. A woman of many enticements.

Theo was not the only one who noticed. The tinies below seemed endlessly fascinated by her. Groups of young men gathered on the mountain called Toto-Hesker, at the level of her chest, and watched her wash herself in the waterfall; they were willing to watch her do anything. Most important to them was that a 200-foot woman had 35-foot b.r.e.a.s.t.s, ten-foot-tall lips, legs eighty feet high.

Where had she come from? Theo wondered. She was not awake the last time he was conscious. Or perhaps she had been. He knew that his memory was not good. His memory of this land bore little resemblance to what lay around him now. Hadn't it been colder before? Had there not been a glacier between those peaks? He had no great faith in his memory, and yet he was almost certain that this region had changed. The villagers called it Northland now, and the name seemed apt enough. They were not far from the top of the earth, and during the summer, the days stretched elliptically, morning meeting morning. That much had not changed.

But certain variations were beyond debate. When he last roamed this land, there had not been the tiny people - built like himself but so very small. They had almost certainly appeared in the intervening epochs. Once they knew that the giants meant them no harm, as he lay down to sleep and his ears were close to earth, they asked Theo about other nearby mountains, foothills. Are they all like you? Will they awaken? Theo tried to rea.s.sure them, but he could not lie. He didn't know who was a mountain and who was not a mountain. So much was unfamiliar to him. There had not been so many deer, so many moose and bears. He remembered being very hungry when he last walked these hills; he had been forced to eat trees, turtles, whales. Now there was plenty of delicious food, easily caught. Soren and Magdelena could eat whole forests of animals at any meal, carelessly tossing the bones on rooftops. Theo could get by on a few deer, maybe a few dozen rabbits, eating everything whole, leaving no mess. Afterward he would enjoy a long drink from the white-cold runoff of the snow-capped peak to the west.

Magdelena could be mine, Theo thought, foolishly, in the first hours and days. After all, the three of them spoke together, ate together. There was equanimity, he thought. Those first days were good days. Theo and Soren and Magdelena chased herds of buffalo off the cliffs, ate what they needed and stored the rest in nets they hung from the tallest trees. They made fires and slept well in the valley where the bobcats chased the antelope.

Because it was he who made Magdelena laugh, Theo presumed she would be his. There were so many things that only he and Magdelena shared. Only he knew how to swim and so swam with Magdelena for hours while Soren dug ma.s.sive holes for no apparent reason. Only he had a sense of rhythm, so when the villagers played their mandolin jigs he danced with Magdelena. She did so while looking at her feet and placing the fallen strands of her hair behind her ears. Theo moved with light feet, trying not to upset the buildings below, but Magdelena had no such control. She jumped, she shuffled, and stood on her hands. And though the church's roof caved when she did, no one minded. The music continued and the men above and below watched, unbreathing.

Soren did not mind. He watched Magdelena dance with Theo, and watched her swim with Theo, and never did he appear jealous. Theo almost felt bad for him. When there are two men and one woman, the math was cruel. What was the third to do? Theo did not want to think about the plight of poor Soren.